Service virtualization relates to emulating the behavior of specific software components in component-based applications, such as application programming interface (API) driven applications, cloud-based applications, or service-oriented architectures. It is used to provide software development and testing teams access to dependent system components that may be otherwise unavailable or difficult to access for development or testing purposes.
Thus, emulating, replicating, and/or copying the software components may reduce dependency constraints on the development and testing teams in enterprise environments. There are numerous commercial virtualization products available on the market. While these products are generally feature-rich, they lack scalability and the necessary APIs to support cloud enablement without added costs associated with an enterprise license agreement (ELA). Moreover, most, if not all, commercial virtualization products have proprietary formats for supporting the virtual services, which makes the interchangeability and migration between various products extremely difficult. And without an ELA, none of these products provide a cost-effective solution for supporting an enterprise that utilizes numerous virtual services at scale.
Accordingly, there is a need for a high-performing, customizable, scalable, and cost-effective service virtualization platform that eliminates the need for expensive and bloated commercial products.